Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas stands at a site in Bradley last year near where the Venoco Co. dug wells searching for oil and natural gas.

Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas stands at a site in Bradley last year near where the Venoco Co. dug wells searching for oil and natural gas.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

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Fracking could boost California economy

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energy

Oil seen lifting state's economy

Development of oil-shale deposits in Central California using fracking and other techniques may boost the state's economic activity by as much as 14.3 percent, a University of Southern California study said.

Such drilling in the Monterey Shale Formation, in addition to increasing per-capita gross domestic product, may add as much as $24.6 billion in state and local tax revenue and as many as 2.8 million jobs by 2020, according to the report released Wednesday.

Unlocking the oil within the 1,750-square-mile swath of rock could require hydraulic fracturing, which injects water and chemicals into the shale. Environmentalists say it may damage water supplies.

ACQUISITIONS

In a classic "acqui-hire" - picking up a company for its talent rather than its products - Facebook on Thursday said it would acquire design firm Hot Studio.

With offices in New York and San Francisco, Hot Studio creates interactive digital products on PCs, tablets and smartphones for its customers. On its LinkedIn page, Hot Studio cites Cisco, Warner Music Group, SFMOMA, and the California Academy of Sciences among its customers.

Hot Studio's team of designers and engineers are going to help Facebook become a more pleasant service to use. One of Facebook's biggest challenges is presenting both relevant and interesting information to users - whether that's articles about astrophysics or cats. To do so takes clever design skills so that the Web pages, whether on a PC or a smartphone, render the information in easily digestible fashion.

According to LinkedIn, Hot Studio has 114 employees, making it one of Facebook's largest acqui-hires yet.

social media

Twitter creating app for music

Twitter is developing a mobile music application that will let its users play and share songs on Apple devices, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The app will stream music from SoundCloud, an audio-sharing service, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the plan hasn't been announced. Twitter reportedly has acquired digital-media startup We Are Hunted as part of its push into music.

Twitter is going beyond 140-character messages as it vies with social-networking rivals to get users to spend more time on its site. The company released a video app in January. Adding music would give record companies a way to promote new tracks by taking advantage of Twitter's word-of-mouth network.

smartphones

Apple shrugs at Samsung gains

Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller, seeking to steal thunder from his company's main competitor in the smartphone market, touted the iPhone as Samsung Electronics prepared to unveil its Galaxy S4 Thursday.

In an interview Wednesday, Schiller played down the market-share gains of Samsung and other device makers that use Google's Android mobile software. Apple lures four times as many Android smartphone owners to buy iPhones as it loses to rivals, he said.

The Korean electronics maker and Apple are grappling for leadership in the $294.5 billion global smartphone industry. Apple's stock has fallen almost 40 percent from a record in September amid concerns about slowing profit and sales growth.

retail

Safeway quickly reducing debt

Safeway is appeasing bondholders by reducing debt at the fastest rate among U.S. grocers in the past two quarters, paving the way for the retailer to resume share buybacks next year.

The extra yield investors demand to hold the company's debt rather than similar-maturity government bonds has dropped almost seven times as fast as peers in 2013, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. Safeway, which trimmed $1.3 billion of debt, the most among U.S. food and drug retailers, in the last two quarters, plans to cut 14 percent from borrowings by the end of the year, leaving obligations at $4.8 billion.

The grocer, which used more than $2.8 billion for stock repurchases in 2011 and 2012, outlined plans last week to return cash to shareholders starting next year after an 18-month hiatus.